Unlikely Apple & Meta team-up brings powerful & local AI to Mac Studio

Meta and Apple have collaborated to bring an advanced AI model, Muse Spark Open, to the M5 Ultra Mac Studios. This open-weight AI model, developed by Meta with 816 billion parameters, can be run locally on the Mac Studio, eliminating the need for cloud servers. To run the model, at least two M5 Ultra Mac Studios with 512GB of unified memory are required, or four machines with 256GB each.

The collaboration leverages Apple's unified memory architecture, allowing the CPU and GPU to access the same memory pool, improving processing efficiency.

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio, starting at $5,499, provides up to 512GB of unified memory and 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth. However, to run Muse Spark Open on a single machine, the required memory configuration pushes costs into the tens of thousands of dollars. Despite the high hardware costs, the model demonstrates significant capabilities. Meta showcased the model's ability to modify code in an open-source app, control video editing software, and perform other specific tasks.

The partnership between Apple and Meta highlights their alignment on running advanced AI models on Apple's hardware. For Apple, the model demonstrates the Mac Studio's AI capabilities, while for Meta, it provides an alternative to relying on cloud infrastructure or dedicated GPU servers. The open-source nature of Muse Spark Open allows developers to access the model through Hugging Face or hosted API providers, even without the necessary hardware. However, the model's commercial limitations apply due to Meta's licensing.